Special-interest groups and political parties spent an unprecedented $24.1 million on television ads and election materials in state court races in 2011-2012, according to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Justice at Stake, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Non-candidate groups (including political parties) pumped in 43% of all funds spent on state high court elections, compared to 22% in the last presidential election cycle. Super PACs and other outside groups funneled big spending into some state judicial elections for the first time.

35% of all funds spent on state high court races came from ten deep-pocketed special interest groups and political parties, compared to 21%, coming from the top ten “super spenders” in 2007-08.

A record $33.7 million was spent on Supreme Court campaign TV ads, far exceeding the previous record of $26.6 million in 2007-08. Negative TV ads aired in at least ten states.

The report also found legislative attacks on merit-based systems for judge selection, including anti-retention campaigns in Florida and Iowa. Florida experienced record spending by all sides when three state Supreme Court justices stood for retention. On Election Day 2012, however, voters retained the three Florida justices and a challenged justice in Iowa. Voters also rejected ballot measures in three states to give politicians more power over the courts.

The report warns of future attacks on reforms designed to protect fair courts and harmful spending trends. According to the report, “Perhaps most disturbing of all, … is that while independent spending on state court races ballooned in 2011–12, it still has room to grow. …[F]uture years may see an even greater expansion in independent spending by interest groups and parties in judicial elections.”

The New Politics of Judicial Elections reports, produced biennially, have monitored election spending and other threats to the impartiality of state courts since 2000.

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia struggled to recall the names of all nine active Supreme Court justices while playing a trivia game Thursday, sources confirmed.

“Let’s see, there’s Breyer, um…Ginsburg. Pretty sure that’s one. And, uh, there’s that guy with the bow tie and the pinched face,” said Justice Scalia, noting that his difficulty in answering stemmed largely from the significant turnover on the nation’s highest court since he memorized the names of its members in high school. “I can picture him in the photo, but what’s his name? Oh, I remember Clarence Thomas, of course, because of the Anita Hill thing, and then there’s that Mexican woman with the name that’s impossible to pronounce. And…Kerrigan?”

After initially declining offers of a hint, Justice Scalia reportedly caved in and asked if someone could just give him the first couple letters of each justice’s last name.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has helped lead opposition to the law, has been hosting moot court sessions to prepare lawyers involved in the case. Advocates on all sides of the issues are planning rallies. Many groups, like the American Constitution Society, are setting up war rooms and daily briefings on the Supreme Court steps.

A record 136 organizations have filed amicus curiae or “friend of the court” briefs to urge the court to either strike down or uphold the law. The groups filing amicus briefs include the usual heavy hitters like the AARP and obscure groups that have rarely, if ever, been involved in a Supreme Court case.

Economists are wading into the debate with briefs that offer clashing views of the benefits and harms that they believe the health care law brings.

Catholic and anti-abortion groups are opposing it because of concerns about federal financing for abortion services.

Massachusetts, which approved a similar insurance model under Governor Mitt Romney, argues in its amicus brief that its experience “confirms that Congress had a rational basis” to impose minimum insurance requirements.

Roscoe Filburn sued to overturn a 1938 federal law that said how much wheat he could grow on his farm and made him pay a penalty for every extra bushel.

The 1942 decision against him, Wickard v. Filburn, is the basis for the Supreme Court’s modern understanding of the scope of federal power. It is the contested ground on which the health care case has been fought in the lower courts, and it is likely to be crucial to the votes of Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, who are widely seen as open to persuasion by either side.

Supporters and opponents of the health care law say the decision helps their side.

To hear the Obama administration tell it, the Filburn decision illustrates how much leeway the federal government has under the Constitution’s commerce clause to regulate the choices people make in matters affecting the economy. If the government can make farmers choose between growing crops and paying a penalty, it can tell people that they must get health insurance or pay a penalty.

Opponents of the law say the case sets the outer limit of federal power, one the health care law exceeds. It is one thing to encourage farmers to buy wheat by punishing them for growing their own. It is another to require people to buy insurance or face a penalty, as the health care law does.

Mr. Filburn argued, as do opponents of the health care overhaul, that he was challenging a law that was not authorized by the Constitution, which allows Congress to regulate commerce “among the several states.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling against him was unanimous.

“Even if appellee’s activity be local,” Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote, “and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.”

The decisions of millions of people to go without health insurance have a significant effect on the national economy by raising other people’s rates and forcing hospitals to pay for the emergency care of those who cannot afford it.

The administration has insisted that the overhaul law is a modest assertion of federal power in comparison to the law Mr. Filburn challenged. “The constitutional foundation for Congress’s action is considerably stronger” for the health care law than for the law that the Supreme Court endorsed in 1942, the administration said in a brief.

Opponents of the law take the opposite view. It is true that the federal government may “regulate bootleggers because of their aggregate harm to the interstate liquor market,” Mr. Carvin wrote in a brief, but the government “may not conscript teetotalers merely because conditions in the liquor market would be improved if more people imbibed.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that slaughterhouse regulation is up to the federal government and struck down a law requiring euthanization of livestock too sick to walk.

The Justices agreed with the National Meat Association that California’s 2009 law violates a federal statute that sets national standards for meat safety.

Justice Elena Kagan said the Federal Meat Inspection Act is clear. FMIA “regulates slaughterhouses’ handling and treatment of nonambulatory pigs from the moment of their delivery through the end of the meat production process,” she wrote. California’s law “endeavors to regulate the same thing, at the same time, in the same place — except by imposing different requirements. The FMIA expressly preempts such a state law.”

The law bans slaughterhouses from buying, butchering or selling downer livestock for human consumption and calls for immediate euthanization of the animals.

FMIA, however, allows federal inspectors to decide whether a nonambulatory animal is fit for human consumption.

The number of pigs becoming nonambulatory after delivery to the slaughterhouse is estimated at 100,000 to 1 million of the 100 million swine slaughtered each year.

California had contended that its law did not run afoul of the federal regulations because it was removing livestock before the federal requirements kicked in.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, had upheld the law.

Wrote Justice Kagan: “The FMIA’s scope includes not only ‘animals that are going to be turned into meat,’ but animals on a slaughterhouse’s premises that will never suffer that fate,” such as diseased hogs.